


A Valuable Lesson

by fictorium



Category: Damages
Genre: F/F, Femslash, dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:06:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WARNING: This may read as dub- or non-con at first, but that's not really what's happening, trust me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Valuable Lesson

Ellen doesn't listen anymore.

  
She hears the words, and mines the information she wants, but she doesn't _listen_ , and Patty can't accept that. It's too dangerous, especially now.

  
Is that ironic? She suspects it might be. To care so intently for the safety of a woman she once wanted dead? Nothing is quite as it should be now though, least of all Patty herself.

  
The plan is surprisingly easy to throw together, because while Uncle Pete is gone and Perry isn't inclined to do her any favors, Patty is still a woman of means in a city where anything can be bought. The van is a rental--cash, of course--and the men to drive and occupy it are paid enough to be thorough, and a little extra not to dare deviate from the plan. This is intended to scare, not for any harm to come to Ellen.

  
Patty knows the difference, now.

  
The evening takes longer than usual to roll around, Catherine entrusted to the latest in a long line of barely-competent nannies, and Patty's phone is switched off in the bottom of her discarded purse. She her hands together and tells herself she isn't nervous.

  
She should have expected that Ellen would put up a fight. As the two reassuringly expensive thugs drag Ellen into the abandoned warehouse space--space that Patty needed a few tricky cases ago and somehow forgot to get rid of--she's kicking and yelling despite her small stature and the black hood over her head. Is Ellen thinking of Chris Sanchez, Patty wonders, before dismissing the thought out of hand. When Ellen is securely in the waiting chair, Patty hands the brown envelope over and lets the two very solid men discreetly fade away into the shadows.

  
This part does not require an audience.

  
Stretching out a silence is something Patty has a black belt in, and so she isn't ruffled by Ellen straining against the bonds at her wrists and ankles, or the raspy shouts that are muffled by the coarse material of the hood. Ellen, despite her increasingly reckless bravado, has to have been tucking thoughts of something exactly like this away in her nightmares most nights; God knows Patty has.

  
Dressed comfortably, Patty can cover the uneven floor almost silently in her flats. She makes a circuit of Ellen, close enough to alert Ellen to her presence, but enough of a distance to prevent leaving clues. No perfume tonight, and a different shampoo purchased on a whim at lunch. Patty wants to remain anonymous as long as possible; it's the only way to make Ellen learn.

  
The fight seems to have gone out of Ellen temporarily, if the way her shoulders slump is any indication. She's in her usual professional clothes, only now her jacket is missing, and the split of her skirt has torn even higher on her thigh. Patty allows herself the luxury of looking, since there's no one to catch her staring. There's no harm in looking after all, and she's only doing this to show Ellen how high the stakes are when you take on a crusade. If Patty enjoys an unguarded look at an attractive woman, it's hardly the worst thing she's done.

  
"Please," Ellen says, her voice barely above a croak. "I didn't see anything. You can let me go."

  
Oh, bargaining. Quite the come down from the expletives Ellen was spewing as she was dragged in. Patty can't help but smile, and it isn't a kind one. It takes a fresh surge of restraint not to speak and bring the charade to an end prematurely.

  
Instead, she makes a deliberate step, loud enough for Ellen to hear and react. Patty is behind her now, and Ellen snaps to attention, straining to hear where the next noise will come from. She has to be disoriented from the struggle and the lack of vision, and Patty intends to use that to her advantage.

  
Keeping perfectly still, Patty drinks in the sight of Ellen’s arms, taut from straining against her bonds. The silky peach camisole reveals the planes of Ellen’s shoulder blades--angular lines that Patty finds her fingers itching to touch. Beneath the black cloth the ends of Ellen’s hair skim over the exposed skin, and Patty finds herself by the times Ellen has brushed past her, the painfully few occasions when Patty has had the physical contact she doesn’t want to crave.

  
But Ellen is everywhere in her life—at the office, once more, in her home and in her family when she looks after Catherine. That Patty Hewes should use the word ‘playdate’ with anyone is beyond ridiculous, but Ellen Parsons and her elegant shoulders have been breaking Patty’s rules for five years now. Each cup of coffee, each shared dessert and Patty finds herself further ensared. So while this is a lesson—a valuable, vital lesson—it might also just be a tiny bit of revenge.

  
Brought back to the scene in front of her by Ellen’s very determined rocking the chair, Patty is forced to act. If Ellen gains any more momentum, she’ll tip the damn thing and risk breaking a bone or worse. Patty steps right up behind her and places a firm hand on Ellen’s shoulder. The touch shocks Ellen still for a moment, but when she recovers she tries to wriggle away from the fingers resting on her collarbone.

  
There’s no wiggle room though, and so Patty tightens her grip as a warning. Ellen takes the hint and stops struggling, at least long enough to regroup. Patty knows enough to know that Ellen will be running all the angles she can think of, trying to expose some weakness that she can exploit; Patty taught her well.

  
“Don’t. Touch. Me,” Ellen spits, her anger painfully apparent. Patty wants to laugh, but she can’t—not yet. She responds instead by placing her other hand on Ellen’s shoulder and squeezing, hard.

  
“Fuck you,” Ellen spits, and Patty can’t deny the surge between her thighs at the thought of exactly that. But that isn’t what tonight is supposed to be about; Patty can’t allow herself to want that, or things get even messier and even less safe.

  
She circles around to Ellen’s front, opting to lean on Ellen’s stockinged thighs now. If Patty lets her thumbs graze Ellen’s inner thighs a little, it isn’t intentional, but she’s stunned by the little whimper that escapes Ellen at the contact.

  
No.

  
No, she can’t be.

  
Ellen, pretty wholesome beyond her fondness for bourbon and the occasional firearm, can’t be turned on by being bound and touched by a stranger. Patty can’t believe it; Patty can’t believe her _luck_.

  
She can’t. This wasn’t her intent, not at all. And yet… Ellen tied up—and, yes, vulnerable—like this is impossible to resist. Patty can feel the familiar surge of adrenalin, coursing through her. What happens now is entirely in her hands, and control is the one thing that turns Patty on.

  
Leaning in closer, Patty is close enough to graze the black hood with her lips, but she resists. As a final experiment, she strokes a little harder and a little higher on Ellen’s thighs, and another stifled moan is Patty’s reward.

  
That’s the final straw for Patty’s self-restraint. Telling herself that she’ll stop the second Ellen asks her to, Patty lets her greedy hands wander. Pushing Ellen’s skirt roughly up and out of the way, Patty is greeted by the subtle tilt of Ellen’s hips rocking towards her touch. The bonds at Ellen’s ankles mean her legs are naturally spread, revealing the triangle of black lace that covers Ellen’s cunt. Patty doesn’t know if she’ll get that far, but God she really wants to.

  
Ellen isn’t protesting, Patty notes with a smirk. Can it be that she’s somehow stumbled onto some kind of secret kink? Ellen has been surprisingly forthcoming about her romantic life in these past few months. Perhaps it’s safer ground than talk of work, of the cost of the lives they’ve chosen, and the losses already sustained. Not to mention the surveillance Patty’s paid for at various points—knowledge is power, and Patty is both powerful and secure in thinking that Ellen is otherwise pretty vanilla.

  
Would she react differently knowing that a woman is touching her? Patty knows her hands aren’t exactly delicate, roughened from years of handling entire forests worth of paper. She punctuates the thought by skimming one finger over the waistband of Ellen’s panties, receiving only a gasp and gentle squirming in return.

  
Almost drunk on the sensations it provokes, Patty lets her other hand drift higher, inching over the smooth material of Ellen’s top. She can feel how slender Ellen is, despite Patty’s silent campaign to foist more desserts on her at any given opportunity. There’s nothing lacking from the soft curve of Ellen’s breast though, and Patty cups each one in turn with a firm grip. She’s hopelessly addicted to being able to touch like this, no matter how often she’s told herself that these were simply the delusions of a sexually-frustrated woman.

  
Ellen is the one who sounds frustrated, moaning in displeasure when Patty withdraws the attentions of her hands.

  
“Is this the only way you can get a girl?” Ellen sasses, but there’s no mistaking that her voice is lower, huskier. “Got to tie her up and make sure she can’t see you?”

  
“Sssh,” Patty chastises, grateful beyond words that Ellen isn’t suggesting anything that sounds like stopping.

  
“Make me,” Ellen snaps, as challenging as ever. Patty clit throbs at the words alone, and she’s so turned on she could scream. She can’t rest until Ellen is in an equally sorry state, and so she resumes her caresses, only rougher this time.  
Ellen likes rough—if the way she arches into the touch is any indication—and Patty finds herself lavishing attention on Ellen’s breasts with both hands. Her nipples respond in an instant, hardening under the careless circling of Patty’s thumbs and again when Patty rolls and pinches between her fingers. Ellen isn’t even trying to keep quiet now, moans punctuating the muttered cursing that falls into a rhythm with how Patty is touching her.

  
Without noticing, Patty has slumped to her knees in front of Ellen. It’s easier this way, to touch and to watch the reactions. Ellen has parted her legs a little further, as far as the chair and the ties on her ankles will allow, and Patty can’t deny herself any longer.

  
It’s the work of a few seconds to find a seam on Ellen’s panties and tug. They tear with surprising ease, and Patty is quick in pulling the material away altogether. Her eyes feast on the sight she’s exposed: the neatly-trimmed strip of curls, moisture already clinging to them, with plenty of wetness below. Patty actually licks her lips, because she hadn’t expected Ellen to react quite so beautifully.

  
“What’s wrong?” Ellen asks when Patty doesn’t touch her at all for a long minute. “Don’t have the balls to finish what you started?”

  
Patty should be ashamed of how easily she’s goaded, but she takes one finger and draws a very deliberate line through the wetness coating Ellen’s lips. Ellen actually sighs, as though relieved to be touched again, and Patty stops worrying about how she’ll have to change her plans to conceal her identity as the one to fuck Ellen while she’s bound in a chair. All Patty had allowed for was some silent treatment and then pulling off the hood to teach Ellen a lesson. This distraction has shot that plan all to hell, but Patty finds it hard to care.

  
Patty strokes Ellen’s cunt with her right hand, unbuttoning her own slacks with her left. Patty’s desperately wet too, craving any kind of touch to take some of the edge off before she loses her mind altogether. She’ll get them both off, quick and dirty, then leave for a few minutes before rushing back in and pretending to ‘find’ Ellen. It isn’t foolproof, but it’s going to have to do. Anything else—anything that might require not touching Ellen this way—is now completely out of the question.

  
Pushing two fingers roughly inside, Patty gasps involuntarily at how Ellen clenches around them. She’s almost impossibly tight, and Patty is already consumed with thoughts of working in a third. If she’s doing this, she’s going to make damn sure neither of them forget it; to be unremarkable at this stage would be a crime.

  
Ellen is panting now, and Patty’s breathing nearly as hard despite her haphazard touches for her own needs. It isn’t enough to get off, but there’ll be time for that once she gets Ellen off. Patty already knows this little scene will be one she replays in her mind whenever she masturbates from now on.

  
Her thumb pressed down on Ellen’s clit is apparently a welcome addition, because Ellen drops her head back and sobs with what might be gratitude. Patty panics for a moment that it will allow Ellen to see just a little, but those guys did a thorough job and fastened the hood well. As Patty’s hand picks up the pace (her fingers are aching already, but fuck, even a broken bone will be worth it) she occupies her mouth with Ellen’s very willing nipple. Patty rubs her tongue hard and fast over the silk, dragging the damp material back and forth over the erect nub in a way that makes Ellen’s breath keep hitching in her throat.

  
The third finger doesn’t take much effort in the end, and although Patty’s wrist protests she keeps working them in and out with alternating pressure from her thumb. Ellen is incoherent, her chest flushed a deep shade of pink, and she’s wet enough for it to be pooling on the surface of the chair between her thighs.

  
And before Patty can really consider drawing it out any further, before she can formulate a plan to bring Ellen to the edge and back away, over and over, Ellen comes.

  
Hard.

  
It might actually be a scream that falls from Ellen’s hidden mouth, but Patty feels punchdrunk at the sight before her. Picking up the pace of her almost forgotten left hand, she rubs her clit frantically until she’s climaxing too, covering her moans of pleasure with Ellen’s somewhat louder ones.

  
Patty’s wresting her fingers free, and then slowly licking them when she hears the last thing she was expecting.

  
Her name.

  
No, she has to have misheard. It cuts through her post-coital buzz pretty fast, and her hand falls back to her side, the sticky taste of Ellen forgotten in a moment of pure dread.

  
“Patty,” Ellen says, again. No mistaking it this time. “Patty?”

  
Still in shock, Patty forces herself back onto sore legs and considers her options. Ellen could be bluffing, of course. Maybe it’s a hunch based on the fact that Patty used her fingers and not… anything more male. Goddamned rash decisions. Wasn’t that exactly why Patty had concocted this ridiculous scheme in the first place.

  
There’s no denying Ellen’s alert posture though, even if her limbs appear considerably more relaxed than before. She’s waiting, and she knows she’s guessed right. Anyone else would have spoken up by now, and Patty entertains the hysterical notion of trying to disguise her voice and bluff her way through.

  
No, she concedes with a sigh. She’s good and caught. If Ellen gets nasty, well, Patty’s always been nastier. And not once did Ellen ask her to stop, or say she didn’t want it. With trembling hands, Patty reaches for the simple knot at the side of the hood and undoes it.

  
She pulls it off slowly, carefully, revealing messy hair and a very red-faced Ellen Parsons. It takes every last grain of her reserves to accomplish it, but Patty looks Ellen square in the eye as soon as she drops the hood. She will not be ashamed. She will not show any weakness. She will not—not _ever_ \--let Ellen know exactly know how much she wanted this.

  
“I knew,” Ellen mutters, breaking the paralyzing silence. “I knew it was you. The whole time.”

  
“But how…” Patty trails off, a little of the wind taken from her sails.

  
“I’ve been in rooms with you for five years. I know you, Patty. I know how it feels to be near you.”

  
“Then why the act?” Patty doesn’t want to acknowledge the surprising tenderness in Ellen’s words. She can’t think about that.

  
“Oh, Patty. Just because you were the one kidnapping me didn’t mean I’d be safe. In fact, I was still pretty terrified until you started feeling me up.”

  
Ellen actually smiles as she says it—that wide, infectious grin that haunts Patty’s dreams.

  
“You… didn’t object,” Patty offers, weakly.

  
“Now why would I do that?” Ellen is deadly serious again, licking her lips as she takes in Patty’s disheveled appearance. Patty’s pants are unbuttoned and loose around her hips, her blouse untucked and wrinkled. She’s a mess, and all because of Ellen.

  
“I suppose you want to go now,” Patty concedes, moving to release Ellen.

  
“Why waste a perfectly good chair?” Ellen shoots back, raising her eyebrow with the unspoken challenge. “Give me one hand, and we’ll take it from there.”

  
Really not believing her luck now, Patty lets her pants slide to the floor and then straddles Ellen, leaning in close while she reaches behind and unties one of Ellen’s hands. Whimpering with something that might be relief, Ellen flexes her fingers and rotates the wrist, not looking at Patty while she does.

  
Maybe that’s why Patty doesn’t see the slap coming, since she’s staring so intently at Ellen’s face, but it hurts like a motherfucker when it lands. Her left cheek is on fire in an instant, and Patty concentrates on not allowing her eyes to water even as a gasped “fuck” falls from her lips.

  
Ellen looks smug at having scored some kind of point, but there’s concern there too because the stupid girl can’t seem to stop caring about Patty, and that’s the most dangerous thing of all. Patty’s about to tell her so, the words drowning in spite as she prepares to say them, but Ellen cuts her off with a kiss. It’s surprisingly sweet, almost tender, but Ellen is determined with her tongue and it’s all Patty can do to keep up.

  
When their lips finally part, Patty finds herself struggling for air. Oh, she is in so much more trouble than she should ever let herself be. Ellen’s free hand slipping beneath her blouse only confirms it; even the light touch of Ellen’s fingertips is enough to feel like scorching on Patty’s oversensitive skin.

  
Bracing herself with her feet on the floor, Patty takes another kiss, this time tangling her fingers in Ellen’s usually flawless hair. She’s smiling, genuinely, when they break apart again.

  
“Tell me what you want, Patty,” Ellen breathes against her neck. In any other space the words might be lost, but the emptiness works in their favour. Patty takes a deep breath, considering the throbbing that persists between her legs, and decides to just ask for what she wants. No games, no suggestions or traps for Ellen to fall into.

  
And this time, Ellen listens.

  



End file.
